LEGO Goes BIG

The Bjarke Ingels Group will design a museum for LEGO in the company's historic home in Denmark.

The Bjarke Ingels Group is designing the LEGO Brand House, a public LEGO museum and experience center, in Billund, Denmark, the company's historic home and site of its current headquarters.

"It's going to be looking at LEGO from all its different aspects—LEGO as an artform, its cultural impact," Bjarke Ingels says.

The LEGO company already maintains one museum in Billund, the LEGO Idea House. But that museum is not public. The LEGO Brand House, designed by BIG to be opened in the next few years, will invite visitors to view exhibits but also participate in its programming.

"When we were doing the research for it [the LEGO Brand House], we realized, if you would consider it just an art museum, you would be able to fill it with so much user content of such a high quality," Ingels says—referring to the incredible uses people find for the toys. Ingels mentions the proliferation of YouTube videos featuring creating LEGO applications as an inspiration for his work. A Rube Goldberg machine–like mechanized LEGO contraption for moving around sports balls is one example of the kind of user work Ingels is describing; a trailer for the Christopher Nolan filmThe Dark Knight Rises built entirely from LEGOs, is another.

LEGO Group Owner and former LEGO CEO Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen described his vision for the LEGO Brand House last year. "It will be somewhere where people can enjoy active fun but at the same time it will be an educational and inspirational experience—everything that LEGO play offers," Kristiansen said.

"I've been meeting with these AFOLs"—Adult Fans of LEGO, whom Ingels describes as super-users—"and I've been learning quite a bit about LEGO," Ingels says. "It will be the best museum ever."